Blog: Exhibitions

All Imagery for the book, Contact, was captured at 16bit, 600dpi, ProPhoto RGB at 200mm x 250mm. This then became our raw uncorrected file. From this file we prepared a master RGB file, where we dodged and burnt with density as well as contrast, utilising the Adjustment layer and layer mask features within Photoshop. Once all files were prepared in this fashion we were ready to place them into the designer’s (Brett Wiencke, Art …

With the assistance of our colleagues at the National Archives of Australia, readers of this blog can go straight to selected service records using hyperlinks we've provided in the text of our posts. These digitised records allow you to read much more about the background, service experience and fate of some members of the Australian Imperial Force.
For example, in an earlier post about our exhibition we mentioned Sgt Charles Reginald …

Stephen Dupont, Members of Interfet and journalists, Dili, 1999 (P04315.052) P04315.052
INTRODUCTION
On 6 August 1945, when the atomic bomb was unleashed above the city of Hiroshima, the world changed forever. Photographs of the devastation brought home in raw detail the shocking power of this ultimate weapon.
Photography has been bound in an intimate and changing relationship with war since its invention in the 19th …

German and Turkish POWs H02980On 19 September 1918 General Sir Edmund Allenby launched his final offensive in Palestine. The attack was a great success and the cavalry swept over the hills towards Megiddo, the ancient Armageddon. Turkish general headquarters was overrun on 20 September and thousands of prisoners were taken. Urban Stanley Billing was a trooper in 8th Australian Light Horse Regiment. A fortnight after the …

A member of the TE Lawrence Studies List posted a pretty useful link today to a site that gives a neat 90 second visual display of who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history. It is all mapped out against a timeline from 3,000 BC, up to the present day. See Maps of War.
We thought it was good background, especially to the subjects of our exhibition who were engaged in rolling back the Ottoman Empire.
Hopefully we will …

Emir Feisal B01764
Ninety years ago, on 23 October 1916, the momentous first encounter took place between Captain TE Lawrence, a relatively junior British intelligence officer from Cairo, and Emir Feisal, the 33 year old third son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca.
Earlier that year, in June, Hussein had initiated a revolt of the Arabs living in the Hejaz against Turkish rule. Early operations had gone well, with both Mecca and …

Leslie Cecil Maygar VC took over command of the 8th Light Horse Regiment at Gallipoli some weeks
Lieutenant Colonel Leslie C. Maygar VC DSO VD A04436after the disastrous charge at the Nek. He led the regiment through the fighting in Sinai in 1916 and at Gaza in the spring of 1917.
On 31 October 1917, for the battle of Beersheba, the 8th Light Horse was placed in reserve. Towards the end of the afternoon, around the time …

Lawrence worked for the Military Intelligence Department in Cairo as an intelligence officer from December
Handbook of the Turkish Army, 1 March 1915 1914 to November 1916. His knowledge of the Middle East gained through his pre-war studies and work as an archaeologist in Syria and Sinai, were put to good use in Cairo gathering and collating intelligence on enemy troops throughout the Turkish Empire and producing maps in …

Imperial War Museum In 2005 we knew the Imperial War Museum was putting together a large exhibition on the whole life of T.E. Lawrence and at one stage we thought it may have been possible to ask for the exhibition to come to Australia after it had finished at the IWM. This of course proved to be impossible due to the large number of loans negotiated especially for the exhibition by the IWM. We decided to run our own …

Rania McPhillamy Rania MacPhillamy, born in 1889, was the daughter of a wealthy squatter from Forbes NSW. In 1915 she trained as a VAD and went to Egypt to help nurse the wounded from Gallipoli. After the death of her sweetheart, Ronnie MacDonald of the 1st Light Horse Regiment, Rania stayed on in Egypt and formed a remarkable partnership with an older Australian, Mrs Alice Chisholm. Together they set up a canteen for …